Thanks for the great review, Andrew, I was seven when I saw this for the first time and I remember Stephen King's review of it in Danse Macabre: ["Saul] Bass' ants aren't even really big, they're just little buggers who've pulled together.":

I have found a mistake in your review. At the end of paragraph three you wrote "(unless they are holding hands and singing)" when clearly what you meant to say was "(Especially when they are holding hands and singing)".

What if...what if regular everyday ants are smart because they do not build skyscrapers? What if Donald Trump is the idiot?

I like that- it echoes that line from Douglas Adams's the Hitchhiker's Guide, the one that goes (roughly paraphrased):

Man always considered himself smarter than dolphins because of all the great things he had accomplished; the wheel, New York City, that sort of thing, while all the dolphins did was muck about in the water having a good time. Conversely, dolphins considered themselves superior for exactly the same reasons.

What if...what if regular everyday ants are smart because they do not build skyscrapers? What if Donald Trump is the idiot?

I like that- it echoes that line from Douglas Adams's the Hitchhiker's Guide, the one that goes (roughly paraphrased):

Douglas Adams was an incredible writer. The characters were perhaps average, but he had a way of working little truths into his writing that make me laugh out loud. Thank you much for that; it made my day.

thought this movie was a bit too cerebral for the common movie watcher. but notion of instant evolutionary uplift by way of cosmic rays is wacky taffy

very 70s

Unfortunately, the humans are shallow personalities. The ants end up with more depth as characters. The long sequence with the ants dragging the poison to the queen, and each dying in turn, had a lot of empathy. For me, the scenes with the scientists interacting are mostly filler, and the young girl is entirely filler. The scene where the scientists viewed the ant skyscrapers is awesome. They needed more scenes like that and like the self-sacrificing poison retrieval. That or extremely selfish scenes with the humans as counterpoint to the ants.

When I saw this, and I saw only the ending to it, I found it very cerebral. More so than most films. I don't know whether I liked it or not, as I said, I didn't see all of it. One of these days I'm going to have to see all of it, to see whether I liked it not.

OMG, thank you for this hilarious, insightful and totally spot-on review! I haven't seen this movie for about 20 years, and I remember it as though it were yesterday. Kinda just sticks with you! I agree that it is a forgotten classic, as we all remember it so well, and apparently so would anyone else that watches it.And yes, D.T. is an idiot!